Woven touch-and-close fastener elements whose warp, weft and pile threads are all made of textile fibers, but can also be formed of plastic or metal fibers, are freely available on the market in numerous designs. The pile threads in the ground fabric formed of warp and weft threads have loop-shaped hook elements. The threads of the thread system can be formed of multifilament threads or multifilament yarns. In particular, if the pile threads are formed from monofilament threads or monofilament yarns, the relevant closed pile thread loops can be cut or thermally separated from each other to then obtain resilient locking hooks that can be releasably engaged with a correspondingly designed fleece loop material of the other touch-and-close fastener element.
If the loop ends are thermally treated, for example melted, in the cutting process, mushroom-shaped fastening heads arise during subsequent hardening as fastening elements from the inherent tension behavior of the melted plastic material. Furthermore, such hook or mushroom-shaped fastening elements can releasably engage with each other or with felt touch-and-close fastener elements, and form the touch-and-close fastener as a whole.
With such known touch-and-close fastener systems, very favorable pealing resistance values are achievable, i.e., relatively high force is required to cause the flat, corresponding touch-and-close fastener elements that form the touch-and-close fastener as a whole to release the connection, which is always desirable.
With the known solutions, plastic materials, in particular in the form of nylon or polypropylene material, are also used as the thread and yarn systems, in addition to textile fiber materials. Furthermore, the use of metal thread systems has also been proposed for the known solution. However, only one production material is consistently used for the entire thread system for each known fastening material.
When using the known thread or yarn material consist of only one production material, a highly favorable basic stability for the entire fabric is achieved. In particular, the pile threads cannot be easily removed from the ground fabric by a corresponding hook fastening material when the touch-and-close fastener is pulled apart. Viewed over the long term, that difficult removal would undesirably impair the functioning of the touch-and-close fastener. If only such stable thread systems are used, they lose their ability to fasten or close from frequent washing, in particular when high temperatures are used for the washing medium for reasons of disinfection or sterilization. The employed cleanser frequently also proves to be very aggressive toward the thread system of the employed textile and plastic materials.
The invention furthermore relates to a cleaning system using such a flat touch-and-close fastener element. The cleaning systems are also colloquially termed mops. If such mop cleaning systems are for example used in hospitals, increased disinfection and sterility requirements accordingly exist. The flat wiping material used for the cleaning system is provided on the back side with the flat touch-and-close fastener element to be connected to a hand-actuatable holder with a corresponding touch-and-close fastener element. The holder is preferably movable along a floor surface to be cleaned by a handle part. The flat wiping material is supposed to be able to withstand at least 500 washing cycles in daily washings over the anticipated life. Furthermore, the touch-and-close fastener element used in such cleaning systems, which is designed to be correspondingly robust for use, is supposed to be able to effectively withstand normal abrasion or fabric delamination.
The known touch-and-close fastener systems with the assignable cleaning systems only insufficiently satisfy these requirements, which is regularly reflected by a short life of the products.